A history of socialism

by Thomas Kirkup

Besides the Parliamentary Socialism, which is based more or less on Marx, anarchism has always found a congenial soil in Spain, Italy, and other countries where misery and oppression have been hereditary for so many centuries, and which even yet have not learned habits of self-control, of free discussion, and open action. It is such an unhappy environment that produced the assassins of President Carnot, the Empress of Austria, and King Humbert of Italy. Anarchism is very powerful and widespread in the south of Spain.

We may note a rapid progress of socialism in Eastern Europe. Even Servia and Bulgaria have socialist parties, which are affiliated to the International. In Austria there is a numerous and active Social Democratic Party, which has introduced the federal principle into its organisation. It is a united party with a common programme and tactics, but it is composed of national groups—German, Czech, Polish, Italian, etc., each of which enjoys a real autonomy. In fact, the party is an International on a small scale, of which the basis as regards principles and tactics is national autonomy and international solidarity. On the political side, it holds that the real and vital forces of the State in Austria can be developed only on the two principles of national autonomy and complete democracy. On the economic side the party adheres to the common principles of socialism. At the general election of 1901 the party polled about 800,000 votes. Its most pressing demand was for universal suffrage as necessary to the political development of the country. After long debate this was granted in 1907, in which year the party polled 1,050,000 votes and returned 87 members to the Reichsrath. The Christian Social Party returned 96 members with 722,000 votes. In view of the medley of races and languages which exist in Austria, the position and organisation of the party have a special interest. The various national groups, we are told, work together in perfect harmony.

The revolutionary movement in Russia had in 1881 its tragic culmination in the assassination of the Emperor Alexander II. Though his successor Alexander III. was for a time kept a prisoner in his palace at Gatschina by fear of the revolutionists, the movement was suppressed, and for several years there was comparative quiet. Among the innovating party a feeling set in that they had been trying to force the march of natural evolution, and a tendency prevailed to await the time when the economic development of the country would make revolutionary action practicable. Under a very high tariff the industrial revolution made rapid progress. Large factories soon led to the creation of a numerous proletariat, with the usual strikes. A gigantic strike at St. Petersburg in 1896 may be regarded as the starting-point of a new revolutionary movement arising naturally out of modern industrial conditions. A Social Democratic Party, which laid great emphasis on the doctrines of Marx, originated in this way. The Russian socialists were for the first time represented at an International Congress in London, 1896.

Groups of socialists, however, had been rising up and taking shape all over the country, and it was felt by many that they could not wait for the unfolding of the economic evolution, and that in the special circumstances of Russia a strenuous revolutionary action was necessary. Some surviving members of the old revolutionary party helped to supply the nucleus of a Socialist Revolutionary Party, which was accordingly formed towards the end of 1901. There were now two important socialist parties in the empire: the Social Democrats, who emphasised the need for awaiting the economic development of Russia, including the full creation of the proletariat, and the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The first party had little hope of leading the peasantry into the movement, so long as they were not expropriated by the growth of the great estates. The second party insisted on an energetic propaganda among the peasantry as well as an active campaign against the Tzardom and its servants.

Besides these two parties we find in Lithuania, Russian Poland, and other parts of Western Russia, a socialist organisation of Jewish workmen called the Bund. It is the peculiar fate of the Jews in Russia that their revolutionary activity renders them obnoxious to the Government, whilst the exactions of the usurers and dealers of the same race make them hateful to peasantry and workers. The Jewish question in Russia can be understood only by due recognition of both points.

The anarchists also are still active in Russia. And among the peasantry there is an agrarian movement, which may be regarded as the most powerful of all, though vague and ill-organised. As we saw in our chapter on anarchism, the revolution in Russia was an exotic or importation from abroad in the reign of Alexander II. It has now taken root in the soil and very strongly shows the influence of conditions peculiar to the country. Mutinies in fleet and army, strikes and popular risings, massacres, assassinations, conflagration, and pillage seem to portend the dissolution sooner or later of an ancient society and a long-established autocracy. The socialists have been the most active agents in the appalling movement.

After the decline of the Owen agitation and of the Christian Socialist movement in 1850, socialism could hardly be said to exist in England, and where it attracted any attention at all, it was generally regarded as a revolutionary curiosity peculiar to the Continent, with little practical interest for a free and normal country like our own. As we have seen, the English workmen took a considerable share in the founding of the International in 1864 and subsequently. But on the fuller development of the revolutionary tendencies of that movement, and especially after the great disaster of the Commune at Paris, socialism lost the not very serious hold which it had found among the English working class. There had indeed always been a group of men who were influenced by personal intercourse with Karl Marx and Engels during their long residence in this country, but they were mostly of foreign extraction, and had no wide relations with the English workmen.

About 1883 English socialism took a fresh start, indirectly through the influence of Henry George, and directly through the teaching of Karl Marx. By his vigorous and sympathetic eloquence Henry George gained a hearing for opinions which were not distinctly socialistic, but certainly tended to disturb the existing modes of thought. Though it led to little positive result, the agitation connected with his name was really the beginning of a radical change in English economics. A variety of causes, among which we may mention the agrarian agitation in Ireland, and the legislation which was designed to meet it, had contributed to shake the confidence of the English public in the finality of the accepted economic doctrines.

The recent English socialism had, in 1884, a definite beginning with the Social Democratic Federation, which, with great fervour, denounced the existing system and proclaimed the views of Marx. Most active and prominent in this movement was Mr. Hyndman; the most eminent was the robust and genial figure of William Morris, widely known as the author of the Earthly Paradise, and one of the foremost of living poets. The chief literary product of the movement at this early stage was Hyndman’s Historical Basis of Socialism in England. The organ of the Federation was, and continues to be, Justice.

About the end of the year 1885 the Socialist League diverged from the Federation on grounds of difference, which were partly personal, partly of principle, for the League showed a decided sympathy with the anarchist theory of socialism. Morris himself, its leading member, had anarchist leanings, which come out clearly in News from Nowhere and other works. Belfort Bax, another prominent member of the League, has published Ethics of Socialism and other works, which represent the extreme and uncompromising side of the movement. The Commonweal was the organ of the League. The League and its organ, however, did not survive many years.